The Gen Project
by Itzika
Summary: Set in the same place with the same people, but incredibly AU. All of them are part of a project the government is embarassed enough about to completely erase. What happens when a patient forces them to confront their past?
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This will be super-AU. This chapter is designed so that you will have no idea who's who or what's happening. That comes later. One of the main cast, however, is not represented here. I won't tell you which one. And just for the record, every break switches people.

If you hate AU, you will despise this story. The whole point is my AU, the one I wish could happen but would ruin the plot of the actual show. It will probably be House/Chase slash—no wait, let me rephrase that. It will definitely be House/Chase, but that is not the whole point. I will do a spinoff when I get to that point in which the slash _will_ be the whole point, but in this I have plans to actually do something. Something that will make a serious crossover more than likely. Please stick around, and don't knock it till you try it. Crossovers will contain the most minimal, vague spoilers I can manage, and will not require seeing the actual show, book, or movie.

Okay, this has been a long A/N, so on with the fic!

---

It's been years, literal years, since I turned them all in. And it doesn't make any sense to me. It hasn't made sense since I first came to this hospital to work, and I found out who I'd be working with. That person… I expected all of them to be in jail. But I guess this one dodged it.

So now I'm in a hospital, where there are all sorts of drugs I can be fed, and I'm working with someone I would easily expect to drug me and kill me. Things like this tend to be sort of stressful.

And I can't even get out of it. If I left, what might happen to the gen?

---

I can still see them. God, I can still see them every time I close my eyes. All the gens who were gunned down when the white coats found out they'd been turned in. Only a handful of them were left by the time the place was shut down.

I expected to go to jail. I really did. I mean, what other option was there? Surely not a hospital. If anyone had told me before it happened that I was going to work in a hospital, I would have told them to get some air holes drilled in their skull. Either that or prescribed anti-psychosis medication. Who in their right mind would trust a convicted mass murderer around sick and dying people? Apparently, human stupidity knows no bounds.

---

I thought things couldn't get worse when they told me I was a gen. I thought things couldn't get worse when cellular breakdown started. Then I though things couldn't get worse when I got hooked on Terrafen, then when I found out that I was developing a resistance to it. I was absolutely sure things couldn't get worse when I saw all of them shot, gunned down like trash.

But this takes the prize.

I'm working with the one who rounded us up for them to kill.

---

I know the gen must have found it. The Terrafen keeps disappearing whenever I get my hands on more. This one must not know how expensive the stuff is to make or to get, or it would seem suspicious that I didn't move it. It probably does anyway, but the gen needs it. You can't question where the stuff you need comes from. You'd wind up dead.

We're all damned, in this place. So many people die, and we're here to see it. Every one of us is damned so many times over, we'll be in hell before we even have the chance to die.

---

So many of them. I see all of them every day. The gen, and the one who made the gen. Both afraid of what the other knows. The one who made the miracle drug, Terrafen. The drug that could save so many lives if it weren't so damn near impossible to make. The one who turned all of them in.

The mole.

The one the government sent in, unaware of who or what it can do. Bugged in every sense of the word. The government's spy, sent here unknowingly to make sure the gen and the maker stay good. If they turn on us, the mole has a failsafe that will kill us all.

And I keep them around.

What kind of a fool am I?


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thanks to my two reviewers, Merlin71 and Nina. Thanks also to Great I'm Bored for putting this story on alert.

This chapter is where I get to really confuse all of you. But don't worry; after this, the next two chapters should clear everything right up. Or at least, mostly everything. After that happens, all who like House/Chase will please find The Gen Project, version 2. This will be up as soon as there is a difference between it and this one, and will be a complete House/Chase slash. This one will not be a complete House/Chase slash. (The Gen Project version 2 will have all the same scenes, modified slightly to allow for slash, plus a few more which simply cannot exist in a non-slash fic.)

That's really all I have to say. On with the fic!

---

Chase came in late on Monday.

It was unintentional, a tiny slip of a mere five minutes, but that was the day a new patient came in. A very interesting patient whose family would give a great deal to keep her alive. It wasn't a big deal, or it shouldn't have been. There were always new patients. It was a hospital, for crying out loud. But Chase had barely stepped through the door to the conference room when House was on his case.

"Where were you?"

Chase stopped, surprised. "I was running late," he said.

"Really. I hadn't noticed." House beckoned impatiently for Chase to sit down. "Now, as we were saying before Chase came in late—"

"Five whole minutes, what a crime," Chase muttered.

For once, House ignored him. "—The patient came in a few weeks ago with cancer. She came back last night with what appeared to be lupus."

"So, we test for lupus," Foreman said, which was apparently what he had brought up right before Chase arrived.

"Done. No autoantibodies. Did I not use the past tense?"

"So why did you bring it up?" Cameron asked.

"Because—" House had begun writing down the symptoms on his beloved whiteboard "—the patient has every symptom of lupus we know." The symptoms took up two columns and included everything from rashes to chest pain to fever to photosensitivity. "Now, assuming the patient only has one disease, what else could cause it?"

No one said what most of them were thinking, what lupus was remarkably similar to. Instead House went on.

"Which would mean she has more than one disease."

"Which would make this nearly impossible to diagnose, let alone treat," Foreman added.

"Thank you Commander Obvious," House said sarcastically. "Now. Who wants to go start testing for whatever's causing this?"

Cameron raised a hand.

"Oh, good, the girl. She'll trust you—maybe. Test for drugs first. If she's on something, it'll screw up our diagnosis."

Cameron frowned at the white board. "I don't think drugs could cause many of these symptoms," she said.

"You'd be surprised," someone else muttered. Cameron shrugged at House's look and left.

---

Hours later, a solitary figure stood by the wall in the patient's room. Another entered after a few moments and joined the first.

"She doesn't have cancer anymore."

"Wasn't that your goal? Terrafen is designed to, what was it… 'detect aspects of the user's physiology which differ significantly from that of a normal human and correct them.'"

"You make it sound so simple."

There was silence for a moment. Then the first said, "You know there's a gen here."

"I've known it longer than you."

"I doubt that highly."

"How long have you known about it?"

"Since I saw him."

"I was told before I arrived here."

"Hmm. I guess you did know longer."

"I should have bet money on that."

"No one said it…"

"If you had, I would have been dragged in for questioning and malpractice."

"…But everyone knows it."

"Knows what?"

"Come on. Knows it has to be Terrafen."

"I don't know what you're going on about, but Terrafen doesn't work that way. It cannot kill a person."

"You can overdose on anything."

"Not on Terrafen. If you OD, it kills itself off."

"Handy."

"Yes, it is, isn't it."

"Bad batch?"

"If it is, I didn't make it. And barring you, no one else knows how, except the people who are in jail."

"So, not Terrafen."

"No. Not Terrafen."

"Then what is it?"

"I don't know."

"Hn. Well, I'd better get back to work."

---

Margaret Jane Harris woke up an hour later. Her chest was burning. She sat up, trying to get rid of the feeling of drowning. Her body was shaking, the veins in her legs bulging. She spat out something hard and saw a tooth on the blanket. Horrified, she ran her tongue around her mouth, only to find that none were missing.

She was shaking. _Impossible,_ she thought. _It's impossible… there's no way, it's not real, just a dream…_

She was still trying to convince herself of that when blood fought its way up her throat and spilled out onto the sheets, and she passed out.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Thanks for sticking with me! One more chapter (this one) before I start using names instead of labels. The chapter immediately after next will be pretty much all explanation, and the next will involve going back and tagging every scene I didn't tag. After that, I hope there will be no excessive confusion.

On with the fic!

---

The figure stumbled walking to the ICU, swallowed hard, and clutched its stomach. In the shadow by the wall, an eye rolled back in its socket. Blood and tears dripped from a break in the eye. Stumbling steps took the figure out of the hall, into a comatose patient's room.

---

The darkened figure watched the woman on the bed. She'd had three heart attacks, burst at least five different blood vessels, spat up a full set of teeth and two pints of blood, and grown sensitive enough to count the threads in the blanket without looking. She wasn't getting better—she was getting worse.

Leaving the ignorant doctor behind, the figure left. Where would the gen be?

---

The gen's breathing was heavy and ragged. One hand fumbled getting out the syringe and needly. It was filled with a thick, clear liquid that trembled and bubbled slightly.

The needle was touching the gen's skin when the door opened. The gen looked up, whites showing all the way around the gen's eyes, hand frozen.

The figure in the doorway surveyed the scene with a bored expression. "I'm not even going to go into how many people you could have saved with that," the person said dryly, and strode over, taking the needle.

The gen grabbed for the needle, but the other pulled it away. "Unless you want to give yourself an injection with a rubber glove, I suggest you let me do this." Startled, the gen looked down. The thumb and little finger on the gen's right hand were bent over in a strange curve, having lost their bones. The gen closed his eyes, sighed, and nodded. The other watched the gen for a brief moment before targeting the gen's vein and injecting the liquid.

The liquid had an immediate effect on the gen: the boneless fingers straightened; the damaged eye healed. The gen straightened, healthy again.

The other figure was looking over the syringe. The one looked at the gen, and the gen winced at the bored expression and the distant fury in the eyes. "You needed this now?" The gen nodded mutely. "It was three hours early." The person reached out suddenly into the gen's pockets and pulled out an empty syringe. "Wait, more like ten hours early. No one's ever developed this much of a resistance before. Of course, no one's ever been on it this long, either."

The gen was watching the other without fear now, but also without speaking. Suddenly the gen's hand reached out. "Give me those." The other shrugged and handed the syringes back. The gen pocketed them without another word as the other turned and began to leave.

The gen hurried to catch up. "Where are we going?"

"Gonna have another one of those secret meetings."

"The ones where we ignore our colleague?"

"Don't you just love 'em?"

"Not particularly."

"Well, you'll like this one. The Medicine Man and out government-imposed handler will be there, _and_ the goody-two-shoes."

"Why do you call them that?"

"It's more fun than just using their names. Come on. Everyone's in here."

The one opened the door, and three people seated around the table looked up.

---

A/N: I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

The Gen Project WHO'S WHO is here!

There are six people: the gen, the maker (guy or girl who made the gen), the goody-two-shoes (who turned in the maker), the Medicine Man (not necessarily a man, who made Terrafen), the government-imposed supervisor (what more is there to say?), and the mole (who didn't say anything in the first chapter). Anyone who reviews this chapter may add to their review a guess about who's who. Each of the main characters (Cameron, Chase, Foreman, House, Cuddy, Wilson) is exactly one of them. Whoever gets the most right can request any oneshot (barring incest, child sex, and anything loaded with something I don't know, like technobabble), and I will write it and/or find a good one for you. Or, you can request an update of a story I've already started. Either way, it will be up in a week, and I will put you on my favorite authors list if you've written anything. (I hope you like my writing enough to play my game.)

Bai bai!


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: I am SO sorry I haven't updated in so long! I've had this chapter in my notebook for AGES, but I just typed it up today. Sorry!

The next chapter should be easy, as it is me finally explaining what the heck is going on, and I will try to get it up before school starts. After school starts, I will probably take longer updating. (I'm actually going to have to pay attention in school this year… like all the time… bleh.)

Anyway, here is the Gen Project Chapter 4!

---

Cuddy regarded the new arrivals impassively. "All right, House. What is this?"

House smiled blankly at her and came in, Chase following a step behind. Chase gave a smile that was more of a grimace and sat by Cameron as always.

Wilson took a breath. "It's not—"

"Terrafen, yes, we know," House interrupted. "You've said that?"

"So you just ignore Foreman and come in here and talk about how whatever case you've got _isn't_ connected to the Gen Project?" Cuddy snapped incredulously.

House mock-gasped. "She said the G word," he said in hushed tones.

Chase rolled his eyes skyward. "And this time, we're talking about how it _is_ connected."

There was a five-second silence following this announcement. House broke it by saying, "That's a scary thought. Also revolutionary. Scary, too."

"House—" Cameron began.

"I'm not being sarcastic," House said innocently, raising his hands. "If it is connected to the Gen Project, then the AI in Foreman's head will take over and come kill us. So. What's the diagnosis, someone who knows?"

"It's Terrafen," Chase said immediately.

"We already ruled that out!" House half-shouted. "Terrafen doesn't work that way! If it did, you would've died years ago!"

"Terrafen fights anything abnormal. She has spina bifida, remember?" House shut up; Chase continued. "Once the Terrafen takes care of the cancer, it targets her nervous system. When she runs out of Terrafen, she's left with a tunnel system instead of a nervous system."

"And she's not rich enough to get more," House added, stunned comprehension dawning on his face.

"Exactly. So she goes for the next best thing—Bennettine."

"What's that?" Cuddy asked. Wilson spread his hands innocently.

"Before Wilson got the commission that brought about Terrafen," House said, speaking as quickly as he always did when he was explaining things, "a wealthy man named Bennett commissioned an invincible daughter. This girl would heal so fast you might as well not have hurt her. She died less than a year after waking up from multiple heart attacks caused by tissues blocking her arteries. In other words, she regenerated too fast. A couple whitecoats—scientists, for the goody-two-shoes-who-doesn't-know-lab-slang—" Cameron smiled sarcastically at him "—made a drug using enzymes in her body. They called it Bennettine after the father. And it worked. In diluted form and low, controlled doses, it sped up cellular regeneration enough to hold off a gen's cellular breakdown for about a day."

"Then what was the point of Terrafen?" Cuddy asked.

Chase picked up the explanation. "_Very_ low doses were safe. If the dosage was just ten mg off, the user died the same way as Claire."

Cameron frowned. "That's… not good."

"Of _course _it's good," House said in a voice absolutely saturated with sarcasm, "why wouldn't it be? Anyway, the problem with Bennettine was the reason they got Wilson."

Cuddy stood. "Well. I'll go tell the government that we have this covered. You make that true."

"That's… not so simple," Chase said, stopping Cuddy. "There's no antidote for Bennettine."

Cuddy whirled, shock and horror painted on her face. "WHAT?" she shrieked. "Why the hell not?"

"Think about it like from their point of view," House said, with the air of someone explaining that two and two makes four. "Gens were expendable; Wilson was easy to find. It was better for them to just get a new miracle drug than to try and work with Bennettine."

"Spoken like a true _whitecoat,_" Cameron spat out. "That woman is _dying_, and all you can say is how it was better for them?!"

House regarded her impassively. "There's nothing else to say."

"There is." The five doctors turned to the door to see Foreman wearing a blank look and holding a gun. Chase stood; House pushed back away from the table, as though putting a bit more distance between himself and Foreman would save him. Wilson moved towards Foreman, but backed away quickly with his hands up as the other man turned the gun on him.

Foreman looked at House. "You broke our agreement," he said simply. "Die."

He fired.

---

A/N: No, I did not forget. Here are the results of The Gen Project Who's Who:

Sora Blade707, as the only one to play, wins! (You did get half of them right, btw.)

The correct answers are:

The gen: Chase

The maker: House

The goody-two-shoes: Cameron

The Medicine Man: Wilson

The government-imposed supervisor: Cuddy

The mole: Foreman

Anyway, thanks for reading! Please drop a review on the way out, and I will try to update sooner!


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